The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
This is a Grey-headed flying fox . These little bat mothers give birth to live young. She will catch the newborn in her wings and gently guide the baby to her teat which is located under the her arm. The mum flies about at night foraging with the baby hanging on tight . I can only imagine what a feat this is.
What amazing creatures they are.
Specific Feedback
This is not a great looking image by any means, but hopefully its an image that may make viewers think about “what else”.
I’m not a big fan of square crops, but no point in keeping the rest of the image. The background was too close and dappled light was bright.
Technical Details
ISO 2000 150-600@460mm Hand held f6.3 1/800
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I like this photo because of the bat pup’s eye catchlight and it took me a while to work out that the “cowl” over the pup is actually mum’s wings. Congratulations on the steady hands and finding a clear path through the trees to the animal.
I played with the photo a bit, increasing the exposure by about half a stop, mapping the black point and pushing the tone curve back to where it was without the black point adjustment and then increasing both saturation and vibrancy. This made the background stay as it was, putting more detail into the bats and bringing out mum’s the gorgeous ginger coat.
I disagree about “not a great looking image”, just needs a tweak.
A fine image showing this behavior, Glennie. I think you did a good job on it, though I do like Rob’s tweaks. It looks like there might have been a very near foreground piece of foliage causing some haziness on the mother’s muzzle and the youngster. I’ve had some success in alleviating that sort of thing with the local selection brush in LR and playing with the dehaze slider. It’s not a cure-all, but you have quite a bit of detail under the haze inmost of the image and I think it would help there.
This was a difficult setting. I was standing on uneven ground shooting as vertical as I could. Strong side lighting was not helping.
I can normally handle noise fairly well, but I think it has beaten me here and the denoising software has made the image a little too soft. The crop is huge. Down to under 10% of the original.
Thankyou @Dennis_Plank ! You could be right about the FG foliage, but I am know I have a fungus growing on my lens. Dehazing also gave a slightly better look.
I love this, Glenys. Bats are fascinating, if somewhat creepy due to cultural lore, but man, these two look so endearing and cuddly! I’m not joking! My first thought is “aw, how adorable, I want to pet them!” And of course, I wouldn’t dare. This is a well captured moment and I like the color and contrast enhancements suggested above.
ML
This is VERY cool, and an amazing capture, with Junior’s eye the center of attention! The RP is a very nice touch. I think you could go a bit farther with an oval soft-edged quick mask in the center and bring the blacks up a bit more. I had to have a look – just made a curves from the QM selection and moved the left slider in to the start of the information.
Hey Glennie,
What a super cool capture of this flying fox and her young. Great story about them also. I had no idea they even existed. The eye of the baby is special as is the hug that mom is giving it. Mom looks so content with her closed. You can also see how thin the membrane is as it is catching backlight and just glowing. Also, the square crop doesn’t bother me one iota at all.
I believe @Dennis_Plank is correct when he said that there was something in the line of sight of the lens that got in the way causing the haziness in about 2/3d’s of the left side of the image. You can see it in the background (much lighter) and in the fox (it’s at an angle running through the head of the fox right through the eye and running right through to the nail clutching the webbing).
I took it into LR for a really quick fix and this is what I came up with. The background and the fox is evened out although if you took more time than I did you could refine this much further with very simple masks in LR.
Anyway, thanks for sharing this. It’s pretty special.
I love how the Mum’s single claw seems to be keeping Junior from falling out. There are so many versions now, all pretty good. I’d choose either Diane’s or your first rework as they show the details of the two faces more clearly. But it’s a super composition, regardless of details.
I have no problem with the square crop here. It was the right choice given the shapes involved, and the little one’s face really pops in the frame.
The haziness is uneven and problematic. Your latest rework is the best of the bunch, but it still appears to have some areas of the frame that lack contrast. My first thought was that this was shot through glass… so maybe it is something on the lens as you speculated (or the humidity on that particular day?). Diane’s and David’s edits do a decent job of cutting through this, though the overall contrast on David’s version is probably a bit extreme (in the background especially). It may indeed require some selective masking to address the haziest areas.
@Max_Waugh I think there is a combination of problems here.
Hand holding and shooting as vertical as I could without over-balancing.
The time of day
The very large crop (Less than 10% if the original frame.)
Fungus growth on the lens (which I hope to have removed soon!)
The mother has a pale stripe running through the centre of her head and she appears to have a lot of pollen smudged around her face which has given a bit of a greenish cast. She is a Grey-headed FF so there could be less contrast in the grey fur?
